Budget can afford the bill: Baillieu

Victorian Premier
Ted Baillieu
insists the $500 million pay deal his government has struck with the state’s police will not put a strain on the public purse.

After months of acrimonious negotiation, the government and the Police Association said on Monday they had struck a deal that will provide an average pay increase of 4.7 per cent a year to the state’s police.

The government has publicly stated a goal of limiting annual pay increases to 2.5 per cent in enterprise bargaining negotiations with any payments over that contingent on productivity improvements.

Mr Baillieu said the deal satisfied these parameters but declined to give details of the value of efficiency gains.

He said the average annual cost to the budget over the deal’s 4½ year term was $110 million.

In the 2009-10 financial year the police force paid $1.29 billion in wages.

In material distributed to members who will have to vote on the proposal, association secretary Greg Davies said the deal delivered “substantial pay rises" and “ticks all the boxes".

“This agreement achieves a raft of major wins that meet and exceed many of the key objectives we set out to achieve at the outset of this campaign," he said.

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The government is already facing industrial action from the state’s public servants and nurses.

Community and Public Sector Union state secretary
Karen Batt
said yesterday the union planned to begin industrial action early in November.

Ms Batt said the deal with the police meant that bargaining now became about equity and the 400 other occupations in the public service would expect a similar offer.

Ms Batt said planned bans would include ministerial drivers refusing to pick up politicians before 8am, not waiting more than 30 minutes for them at meetings and carrying slogans on the side of government cars criticising the Coalition’s wages policy.

“There will be bans in the prison system . . . across public housing and the juvenile justice facilities," she said.

The CPSU’s initial claim was 6 per cent a year plus a 35-hour working week, but Ms Batt said the union had moved on from that position.

The Australian Nursing Federation has asked for an 18.5 per cent pay increase over three years and eight months.

“We’re a long way off an agreement," state secretary
Lisa Fitzpatrick
said.

Opposition Leader
Daniel Andrews
attacked Mr Baillieu for failing to release a breakdown of the costings of the efficiency gains.